The 24-year-old student at Cornell University was selected by the college's medical examiner, Dr. Esther Parker, from 400 young women as "the most nearly perfect physical specimen of womanhood".

There are many reasons that Elsie Scheel was considered as "almost perfect" - including her love of beefsteaks, being an "ardent suffragist" and her fearlessness - but it was the difference in physical desirability between then and now that really caught our eye.

A cutting from The New York Times

A quick flick through any men's (or women's) magazine, a newspaper or any of the various TV channels, will highlight the degree to which standards of what makes a woman desirable have changed over the past century.

The artist ‘photoshopped’ iconic Renaissance paintings, such as Bougeureau’s The Birth of Venus, and Richard’s The Power of Venus, giving the goddess a virtual makeover to resemble the figures we are used to seeing on magazine covers - rubbing a little bottom off here, administering a digital tummy tuck there.

See the artist's work here and let us know what you think in the comments below